Recently I was thinking about updating our Brief History of Space-sims – and something occured to me: what releases have there been in the past two or three years? The only significant one I can think of, off the top of my head, is X3.
Back in the day I used to be a big fan of Tie Fighter, Frontier and Freespace. It would be sad if this genre was to die off and go the same was as that other old favourite, the point-and-click graphical adventure. And I can’t really think of a reason it would be happening. You could argue that the old adventures were killed off by the coming of 3D and more action-adventury types like Tomb Raider. But I wouldn’t have thought space-sims have anything to fear from advancing technology.
Anyone got any ideas? Dying, or just a quiet patch?
Posts
I must say that Space Sims is one of the only sort of games I really haven’t played yet just because it always seemed so boring. Flying through space doing some stuff never seemed to interest me. Just out of curiosity I should play one of those games, maybe they’re not as bad as I think.
August 27, 2007 @ 8:49 am
If you want to try just one, I’d suggest Freespace – there’s lots of pretty intense action and dogfighting.
August 27, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
TIE Fighter is the daddy for me.
Obviously, I love the ridiculous excesses of Wing Commander III and IV, but TF has the better all round package.
We don’t seem to see too many space action games any more – the emphasis seems to be on trying to recreate the Elite template of combat and trading.
Not that that’s a bad thing, but I figured the WWII-in-space dogfighting would have more mainstream appeal than something like X3 – which looks great, but I’d only have time to play it if I was under house arrest or something.
August 27, 2007 @ 12:46 pm